US CTO Choice Down To a Two-Horse Race

theodp writes "Barack Obama apparently didn't return CmdrTaco's call. BusinessWeek reports that the choices for the first US CTO have narrowed, and it's now a two-horse race between Padmasree Warrior, Cisco's CTO, and Vivek Kundra, who holds the same title for the Government of the District of Columbia. Two very different resumes — which would you advise Obama to pick?" I just know I was #3 on the list.

Comments

Re:Answer is obvious?

[Anonymous Coward]

The "dude from Cisco" is a woman. But she's not really "from" Cisco, she came there in the past year from Motorola. And my impression is that she didn't do that great a job at Motorola, and I haven't really heard anything worthwhile out of her while she's been at Cisco. So, I'd go with the other dude.

Warrior == Poor

[Masters Champion]

I can't say anything about the other person, but Ms. Warrior would be a disastrous pick, IMHO. I had some contact with her when she was CTO at Motorola and I came away from that experience thinking she was:

1. Was a poor leader
2. Did not consider opinions other than her own on making decisions.
3. Was really not very knowledgeable
4. Was only out for her own advancement


Perhaps these are the attributes of many successful executives, but don't strike me as qualities you want in a civil servant.

Did you ever have contact with a person of real power/wealth/influence and come away thinking "How did they EVER get to where they are?" The older I get, the more I think success requires some work + many connections + a lot of luck.

It looks like the last might strike Ms. Warrior here again pretty soon.

Re:Cisco Guvmint

[Valdrax]

So yeah they're terrible, which is still probably not as bad as Washington DC.

I'd like to point out that the guy from Washington DC also has private sector experience if you're worried about icky public sector cooties getting all over your new public sector employee. He's also very big on open and transparent government. His resume's a bit light to figure out how good he'll be, but he's probably got a huge leg-up on working with people in Washington.

The lady from Cisco, however, managed a doomed subsidiary of Motorola based on an uneconomical GaAs-on-Si technology before eventually presiding as CTO over the continued slow decline of a company that hasn't had an exciting product since the RAZR years ago before moving on to fill a position at Cisco which had been vacant for two years. While she does want to see more funding for fundamental research and development (not surprising given her fabrication background), the association with Motorola and Cisco does not scream the best and brightest of the private sector to me. Given her academic credentials, she's probably very brilliant, but I don't see how that's translated into success for her companies.